IEC confirms no hacking in 2024 elections, sets sight on 2026 local polls

By Charmaine Ndlela

The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has confirmed there was no evidence of a hacking attempt during the 2024 general elections.

IEC chief electoral officer (CEO) Sy Mamabolo announced this at a media briefing at Election House in Centurion on Tuesday where he also revealed that the next Local Government Elections will be held between November 2, 2026, and January 31, 2027.

Mamabolo explained that a technical glitch, initially suspected to be tampering, was in fact linked to the transfer of results data.

“The glitch occurred when an optimisation solution was taken into production to speed up the transfer of results data from the primary database into the data warehouse. The warehouse pulls results data through a process called Extract, Transform and Load (ETL),” he said.

He added that the data warehouse runs several validations — checking whether results have been audited, whether result slips have been scanned, and whether